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Background: Schizophrenia is associated with expanded CAG/CTG trinucleotide repeats. We wished to determine whether the presence of such expansions correlated with specific subsyndromes or other clinical features of schizophrenia.Method: Seventy patients from England and Wales and 44 patients from Portugal with a DSM-III-R diagnosis of schizophrenia were rated on the OPCRIT checklist. Patient's maximum CAG/CTG repeat length was measured using repeat expansion detection (RED). Significant differences were sought for repeat lengths in subjects categorised according to dimensional and categorical schizophrenia subsyndromes, affective episodes, individual symptoms, and a range of demographic variables.Results: Maximum CAG/CTG repeat length did not differ significantly for any of the clinical or demographic variables studied.Conclusion: There are no subsyndromes or other clinical features of schizophrenia associated with CAG/CTG repeat expansion. Therefore, the identification of the gene(s) that contain expanded CAG/CTG repeats and which are associated with schizophrenia is unlikely to be facilitated at present by using any subsyndromes of schizophrenia as phenotypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Introduction: Sleep habits of Portuguese undergraduates are almost unknown, and very few international published articles have addressed whether demographic and academic variables such as residence, university year and academic field, might be associated to the sleep-wake patterns of university students. The aims of the present work were thus to characterize perceived sleep habits, behaviours and problems of Portuguese undergraduates, and to examine them by gender, residence status, university year and academic field., Population and Methods: The selected participants were 1654 undergraduates (55% female) of a public Portuguese university, aged 17-25 years (M = 19.98, SD = 1.65), at the 1st, 2nd a 3rd university years, studying Engineering, Management, Sciences, Languages and Education, in its majority living outside their parents/family home (<> students). Participants answered to a self-response questionnaire about sleep-wake patterns, developed for the main research., Results: Compared to men, women showed more regular and earlier sleep-wake schedules, fewer sleeplessness nights, and less napping, but more troubles initiating/maintaining sleep and use of pills to fall asleep. <> students had the latest sleep-wake schedules on week nights, and felt more disturbed by noise; <> men reported more sleeplessness nights to complete academic tasks and greater changes of sleep habits since high school. Across university years (1st-3rd), there was a rising of perceived change of sleep habits, a delay of bedtime on school nights, and a decrease, in men, of week-weekend irregularity of rise time and of sleeplessness nights. Engineering students had the fewest difficulties initiating/maintaining sleep and the lowest use of sleeping promoting pills but, together with Sciences and Management, later sleep-wake schedules, than Languages and Education students., Discussion and Conclusion: Differences on sleep-wake patterns were found between men and women, in accordance to the sleep literature. On addition to gender, the present study highlights that university year and, most importantly, residence circumstances, are also important variables to be considered for a better understanding of sleep habits and behaviours in undergraduates. Thus, we hope our findings constitute a contribution for the improvement of health prevention and intervention strategies directed to university students.

We determined the prevalence of anorexia nervosa and bulimia in a large sample of students attending a secondary school on the island of São Miguel (Azores) using the Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents, which enabled us to collect the information necessary to make DSM-III diagnoses. Although the prevalence of anorectic and bulimic behaviour was rather high, the partial syndrome of anorexia nervosa was found in only 0.48% of the students (0.76% for girls and 0.17% for boys) and the syndrome of bulimia in only 0.16% (0.30% of the girls; there were no boys with bulimia). The overall prevalence of eating disorders, including partial syndromes, was rather low (0.64%). These results stand in sharp contrast to reports that eating disorders are common and probably getting more common. The low prevalence found in the present survey is probably due to the absence of sociocultural pressures to control eating and weight.